CasperLabs and Ethereum on Proof of Stake Protocol at CryptoChicks in Toronto, family ran Hack-A-Thon for blockchain family

CasperLabs, a blockchain-oriented Research and Development (R&D) startup, is pleased to announce the partnership with Canadian non-profit organization CryptoChicks. Cryptochicks Hackathon + Blockchain, AI Conference is held in Toronto from May 31 to June 2.

The collaboration will see CasperLabs acting as the main sponsor and co-host of the event. The conference and hackathon will be attended by over 1,000 guests. Top speakers, developers and exhibitors operating in the blockchain and AI space have already confirmed their presence.

The highlight of the event is a panel titled “Scaling Web 3.0 – The First Billion Users of Blockchain,” which will host Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, and Vlad Zamfir, Lead CBC Casper Architect. The panel, moderated by CasperLabs co-founder Steve Nerayoff, will touch upon the future of blockchain, its scalability, and the adoption of the Correct-by-Construction (CBC) Casper Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocol. The later is a version of PoS consensus mechanism that is going to be implemented by both Ethereum and CasperLabs’ blockchain networks.

Interestingly, CryptoChicks co-founder Natalia Ameline happens to be the mother of Vitalik Buterin. In light of this, the hackathon has evident aspects of a family conference. Coincidence or not, the event is overlapping Children’s Day, which is celebrated on June 1 by almost 50 countries around the world. On top of that, the United Nations (UN) proclaimed June 1 to be the Global Day of Parents “to appreciate all parents in all parts of the world for their selfless commitment to children and their lifelong sacrifice towards nurturing this relationship.” This context is nourishing the atmosphere of the hackathon as a family event, in which Mrs. Ameline and her son Vitalik Buterin will be in the spotlight.

CasperLabs and Ethereum Back CBC Casper PoS

The panel hosting Vlad Zamfir and Vitalik Buterin will focus on the CBC Casper PoS consensus mechanism, which is promoted by CasperLabs and the Ethereum Foundation. CasperLabs is working on its own blockchain that will rely on a version of CBC Casper PoS protocol. Elsewhere, Ethereum network is about to replace its PoW algorithm with the new Casper technology as well.

Some of the CasperLabs team members, including Zamfir himself, are closely associated with the Ethereum Foundation. That’s why both blockchain teams came to the conclusion that CBC Casper would transform how the distributed ledger technology (DLT) works.

CBC Casper is a family of consensus protocols that pledge unparalleled benefits over traditional consensus protocols, including:

A simple and shared consensus safety proof;

Flexibility to build consensus protocols on top of new data structures;

Lack of in-protocol finality threshold.

CasperLabs developers consider that PoS is the ideal consensus protocol to achieve scalability, which is why the startup is building its blockchain network around its proprietary consensus method called Correct-by-Construction (CBC) Casper Proof-of-Stake.

According to Vlad Zamfir:

“The technology promises to scale the blockchain without sacrificing decentralization through proof of stake consensus. By removing the mining required by traditional Proof of Work protocols, it will be more ecologically and economically efficient and secure than pre-existing systems.”

When asked in an interview whether the startup would be ready to further collaborate with Ethereum and other projects, CasperLabs co-founder Mrinal Manohar (who is also CEO of ADAPtive holdings) said:

“Linux is pretty great because in spite of the myriad forks, directionally there was a focus to create something great and collaborate, rather than focus on petty competition or palace intrigue. Ethereum was a genius tectonic shift not since replicated in our industry and a lot of us at CasperLabs have been seed investors and supporters of that project since its inception. Our entire code repository on Github is open source and available to everyone. If there is any part of our build that is useful to Ethereum or any project that supports the open source and decentralization ethos, we’d love to share. This is an open invitation. CBC-Casper is an important and evocative technology which needs to be implemented”.

For those who want to find out more about CBC Casper, the conference will be live streaming the event.

About the Author

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About Richard Kastelein

Founder and publisher of industry publication Blockchain News (EST 2015), a partner at ICO services collective Token.Agency ($750m+ and 90+ ICOs and STOs), director of education company Blockchain Partners (Oracle Partner) – Vancouver native Richard Kastelein is an award-winning publisher, innovation executive and entrepreneur. He sits on the advisory boards of some two dozen Blockchain startups and has written over 1500 articles on Blockchain technology and startups at Blockchain News and has also published pioneering articles on ICOs in Harvard Business Review and Venturebeat. Irish Tech News put him in the top 10 Token Architects in Europe.

Kastelein has an Ad Honorem – Honorary Ph.D. and is Chair Professor of Blockchain at China’s first Blockchain University in Nanchang at the Jiangxi Ahead Institute of Software and Technology. In 2018 he was invited to and attended University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School for Business Automation 4.0 programme. Over a half a decade experience judging and rewarding some 1000+ innovation projects as an EU expert for the European Commission’s SME Instrument programme as a startup assessor and as a startup judge for the UK government’s Innovate UK division.

He is a Canadian (Dutch/Irish/English/Métis) whose writing career has ranged from the Canadian Native Press (Arctic) to the Caribbean & Europe. He’s written occasionally for Harvard Business Review, Wired, Venturebeat, The Guardian and Virgin.com, and his work and ideas have been translated into Dutch, Greek, Polish, German and French. A journalist by trade, an entrepreneur and adventurer at heart, Kastelein’s professional career has ranged from political publishing to TV technology, boatbuilding to judging startups, skippering yachts to marketing and more as he’s travelled for nearly 30 years as a Canadian expatriate living around the world. In his 20s, he sailed around the world on small yachts and wrote a series of travel articles called, ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Seas’ travelling by hitching rides on yachts (1989) in major travel and yachting publications. He currently lives in Groningen, Netherlands where he’s raising three teenage daughters with his wife and sailing partner, Wieke Beenen.